


Shrapnel, Tobacco, & Hard-to-Break Habits

by lockhearst



Category: The Walking Dead (Video Games)
Genre: & Hard-to-Break Habits, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, Shrapnel - Freeform, also minor references to s1 & s2 of the game, developed p much pete's whole family, how do tag, i tried so hard rip, mild child abuse, no zombies in 1964 sorry folks, tobacco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2679719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lockhearst/pseuds/lockhearst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The newsman beamed; Pete wasn’t exactly sure what “conference play” or that thing about the title meant, but he figured words like “better news”, “undefeated”, and “earning” were good signs. Well, that, and that his father’s stern gaze in the mirror brightened. “Good on ‘em!” the man cheered, voice gruff with years of cigarette smoking and World War II wear-and-tear. Smoke billowed from his mouth and splayed around his face. Pete realized he craved a smoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shrapnel, Tobacco, & Hard-to-Break Habits

“It’ll be overcast today with a high of—”  
A frustrated look moved across the man’s features as he eyed his son in the rearview mirror. Eleven or not, the boy had to sit in the back. Pop’s rifles always rode shotgun.

“—and now for some better news: the Tar Heels remain undefeated in their conference play and are earning their second ACC baseball title.”

The newsman beamed; Pete wasn’t exactly sure what “conference play” or that thing about the title meant, but he figured words like “better news”, “undefeated”, and “earning” were good signs. Well, that, and that his father’s stern gaze in the mirror brightened. “Good on ‘em!” the man cheered, voice gruff with years of cigarette smoking and World War II wear-and-tear. Smoke billowed from his mouth and splayed around his face. Pete realized he craved a smoke.

 

\---

 

It was overcast; the year of 1964 always seemed to be in Rosman. Kinda like a gloomy, unenthusiastic welcome-back from his two year stay in San Bernardino. A high of 76 degrees, the newsman on the radio said when the broad-shouldered man had loaded his son and hunting equipment into his truck at six in the morning and pulled into the gas station. He said something about rain, too. In fact, it ended up doing just that on hour ride from Asheville. Perfect mood-setter for Pop.

 

\---

 

After arriving, Pete pulled his cramping, nearly-disproportionately long adolescent legs from behind the front seat of the sleeper cab. He stretched when his feet landed in the gravel. “Think it’s time y’upgraded the Stoughton Standard, Pa.” He said, jokingly.

Joe didn’t speak to him for an hour or so. Anything more than a “hurry up, son”, or “you’re too old to cry over a dead rabbit, it’s mother nature, boy” was cause for silence. It left a bad taste in Pete’s mouth. He knew his father was strict about money. Growing up during the Great Depression took a toll on the man and how he went about spending money.

...Of course, his fascination with collecting cars did nothing to help his case.

...Nor did it make any sense to Pete. If he liked to collect cars, why would it be an issue to get a bigger one? Something that benefited the family?

 

\---

 

With a wrinkle in his brow, Joe Randall shoved his son in the back with the barrel of his rifle, making the boy stumble forward over a damp tree root in the mud. The boy stood up, wiped his knees without a word. He’d get a whoopin’ from mama when he got home, for sure. No doubt a second from his father for crying. His skin was soaking through his pants. It must have really poured here, his feet were sinki—

_Shh!_

Peter stopped walking, turned to his father, a quirk in his brow. He wanted to ask _what, pop?_ but opted against it considering his father had cocked his rifle.

...and was...handing it to his son.

Pete grew nervous—he’d never held one of Pop’s guns before; after all, last time he even so much as touched one, he got a spanking for “scaring his sister”. Thing was...Maggie hadn’t even been in the room. Not to mention that she was but a baby; how could she know what a gun was?

But he knew the real reason: the oil on his fingertip made the smallest of marks on the barrel. He heard his father complaining loudly about it later that night when Pete was supposed to be asleep. His bottom hurt too bad to lie on his back, and the heartburn he sustained from a late supper made it hard to doze lying on his gut.

 

\---

 

Joe motioned to a fifteen-point buck on the opposite bank of the river, a gleam in his eye.

He expected Pete to shoot it? Only minutes after he’d teared up—not _cried_ , gosh darnit!—over a dead rabbit? Was this a punishment? A lesson?

Pete looked up to his father, unsure, a bad taste of iron in his mouth. He’d bit his lip; thought it might be bleeding. The little concavity underneath his bottom lip had a seemingly-permanent scab on it from all the times his teeth sunk in. A nervous habit, his mother would say, dabbing it with a tissue, quit that. He tried, he really really did, but it was difficult. Breaking habits was hard, he thought, watching the white smoke billow out from under his adolescent nostrils like an upside-down smokestack.

 

\---

 

“Shoot the gun, son,” Joseph Randall mumbled sternly, pointedly, helping Pete to line up the shot.

“But, Pop—” Pete quietly protested, and Joseph raised his hand to slap the boy across his plump face.

Pete flinched, turned, aimed—

I’m sorry,  
I’m sorry.  
 _I’m so sorry._

 

\---

 

Back near the truck, Pete pulled his Medihaler from his small pack.

Inhaling deeply, exhaling.

_Shht!_

Inhaling again.

 

\---

 

Using the hand with dirtied knuckles(the one that had plunged deep into the mud when he was shoved), Pete rubbed at his sore shoulder. He’d been thrown back into a rock when he fired, wind all knocked out of him; his dad took no time in teaching him to shoot proper. “It’s all about the way y’hold her, son,” he said, raising his gun at nothing in particular. “Just like a woman.”

The rock Pete'd landed on was huge.  
...About as big as his father’s ego,  
Or maybe just a _little_ bit smaller.

 

\---

 

Pete’s bloody under-lip dominated the lower half of his face by the time they were halfway back to Asheville.

His thin lips were pulled in, tears soaking his dirt-smeared cheeks. He tried desperately to pick the dried deer blood out from beneath his fingernails, but to no avail.

 

\---

 

His gaze turned back to the deer in the bed of the truck, bullet hole unceremoniously resting underneath the right eye.

His gaze turned back forward when a creaky laugh came from low in his Pa’s gut; one that churned uneasily in Pete’s. He shifted uncomfortably in his new spot in the front seat. The rifles were demoted to the back. “Y’earned it, son,” he said.

With that laugh, his words stung like acid.

 

“It’s an animal, boy. Get over it.”

“He looked right at me.”

“Your mother will be proud.”

“What if he had a family?” 

“You’re a man now.” A flinch.

“I’m eleven.”

“You’re keeping the family fed.”

Pete found himself having a hard time believing that feeding the family was his job.

 

\---

 

Pete turned his fork in the vegetables; ate everything but the meat.

Even the peas.

He hated peas.

 

\---

 

John Bray was that kinda boy that could fall flat on his face and laugh at a joke he himself made as the school nurse picked the gravel out of his chin with a pair of tweezers.

He had a gap in his front teeth that’d whistle whenever he said “S”, and retained the Baltimore accent he’d been born with.

I gotta warsh the dog, he’d say. Then I can come out and play.

 

\---

 

Pete teased him for the accent, sure, he’d never heard such a thing.

It’s _wash._ Not _wawrsh._

John’d punch him.  
Pete’d punch back harder.

Both boys’ mothers would swat their bottoms across porches, calling out about how that’s what men do best: fight each other over differences in opinions.

 

\---

 

Pete’s dad picked up drinking shortly after his mama went in to get treated for cervical cancer.

He wasn’t a bad guy, Pete knew, but men up and go crazy when they believe their life is over.

Joe swore his was.

 

\---

 

The summer of 1966 was when Pete finally fought back.

His dad had become a booze hound, sitting for hours upon hours watching the television, Parson’s Whiskey in his clenched fist. Liquid swished inside the bottle whenever the rocker’d move.

Pete’d walked Maggie across the way to John’s house so she could have her long-awaited(a whole _two hour_ wait!) playdate with John's younger sister Charlotte.

Upon returning through the back door, a harsh and slurred “Peter!” came from the living room.

“Yeah, Pop?” the thirteen-year-old-and-way-too-wise-for-his-age boy asked, only to be whooped for having not yet started supper, because goddammit, his hardworking father was hungry.

Pete wanted to return with something like “eleven in the morning ain’t no time to start dinner, y’old bastard”, but instead those words found their way into Pete’s knuckles and drilled their way into Joseph Randall’s nose.

Maggie was delighted to be sleeping over Charlotte's house while papa got a "check-up".

John’s mother nursed Pete’s darted eye.

 

\---

 

The doctors said Catherine should be fine, a year cancer-free is good. She'll be fine.

 

\---

 

Pete was appalled that his father wouldn't let his sister in to the ICU to see her mother one last time.

He brought her in, anyway.

 

\---

 

Prohibited from formally attending the funeral, Pete sat up in the peach tree with a cigarette and watched the ceremony. Maggie was on his lap with a mouthful of pulp.

When she was done, he cleaned her hands on the tail of his shirt and loaded the pit into the makeshift slingshot he always carried around, shot it at the back of his father's head.

 

\---

 

Joseph sobered up in 1968 after the second time his son hit back.

Maggie was in the living room, four years old, playing with her brother’s old Coca-Cola truck on the floor when both men burst in from the front, fighting about some war in some place she couldn’t pronounce.

Pop had enlisted. Pop was too old; a man well into his age and nothing more than a starry-eyed boy at once, called by some ungodly white noise to the front of war once again.

That left Peter and Margaret by themselves, ages fifteen and four, to maintain a household.

And Pete wasn’t having it. “What if I get drafted?! I’ll be eighteen in a few years!” he called in Joseph’s face; one of his rare displays of full-out anger, and the first his sister had ever seen. “If you don’t come back and I gotta go—what’ll she do then?! She’ll be alone!”

Suddenly, Joseph had no answers, no words that could sound-out on his booze breath, he had nothing. Nothing.

Nothing, except, “I leave next week.”

Pete broke his father’s nose again.

 

\---

 

Her brother seethed; Maggie wasn’t exactly sure what “war” or that thing about drafted meant, but she figured words like “what’ll she do”, “alone”, and “leave” were not good signs. Well, that, and that her brother’s bleary-eyed gaze in her direction shattered.

 

\---

 

They lost their father and their house all in one sitting.

Their aunt and uncle took them in.

Maggie couldn’t sleep at first. Her belly hurt, she said, and Aunt Maria insisted it was due to her refusal to use the outdoor latrine.

Indoor plumbing must’ve been a thing not-yet discovered by them. Among other things like...just about anything that had been invented or improved upon in the last decade.

They did not have the color TV like Pop had.

They didn’t even _have_ a TV.

 

\---

 

“An Ellen Breslin called fer you last night,” Aunt Maria said skeptically, one morning when Pete roused for breakfast. “From San Bernardino? Don’t know how she reached us, but I took down her phone if you’d like t’call her back.”

“Naw, thanks, Aunt Maria, I’ve no use t’talk t’her.”

Ellen reminded him of cigarettes.  
Cigarettes reminded him of Pop.

 

\---

 

Winter rolled around about as fast as Uncle Nick taught Pete to roll his own cigarettes.

Pete grabbed the mail on his way down the driveway from school, all bundled up in the abnormal North Carolina chill. Maggie wiggled excitedly in the doorway, hoping that her letter from Santa had finally come.

It hadn’t, but a military-sent letter had.

 

\---

 

“I’ve been thinking, kids, and I don’t wanna die.” The words scrawled across the paper in such a way that Pete grew nervous and bit into his lip again. The first time since Sarah Pearlman tried to force him into a kiss after the spring dance last May.

“Never thought I’d be the kinda idiot to say something like that—what with signing up on my own and all—but there it is.”

Pete blinked away tears.

It was wonderful and awful at once; his father's admittance was moving on its own, but would have been just as effective in person.

Effective...and preferred. He wanted a family again.

His father could be dead by this point and he wouldn’t know—it took everything he had not to snap at Maggie who was doing grabby-hands at the stack of envelopes in his hands, balancing on her tiptoes and making “mm! mm!” noises.

 

\---

 

Two days later, Maggie’s letter from Santa arrived. He had guessed everything she wanted for Christmas.

Er.  
Almost everything.

“‘s wrong?” Pete asked; noticed how his younger sister huffed when Aunt Maria read her the letter.

“He forgot what I wanted most,” Maggie said, “I want daddy back.”

 

\---

 

They got him back.

In a casket.

Boots, rifle, helmet, and dog tags resting on top.

Uncle Nick didn’t let Pete to this funeral either, said he didn’t deserve it.

Said he was a bad son, a shame to Joseph.

Said he was a mistake and regretting shooting that deer four years ago disappointed his dad.

You’d done it ‘nuff, Uncle Nick said, but yer hesitance to feed yer family is what disappointed him. He couldn’t trust you to take care of the family. You were afraid t’shoot an animal for the sake of your loved ones.

 

\---

 

Pete woke up.

He shuddered.

 

\---

 

He couldn’t sleep.

He roused early the next morning, months after learning to drive with Uncle Nick, ready to go somewhere. Anywhere, really. And he didn’t have to work at the body shop, which meant he was free to go.

He grabbed his newly-earned license from the bedside table, crept across the room to give Maggie a small kiss, got dressed and headed out.

Didn’t know where he was going; didn’t care to check the signs. He’d find his way back home somehow.

After all, Sunny always had; Pete’s old dog.

If a dumb ol’ dog could, he’s sure he’d manage. He’d be graduating soon. He was smart ‘nuff.

 

\---

 

Once he got there, he knew exactly where he was and that he’d managed to get himself to the very place in which he’d hoped he’d never have to face again.

Pete pulled his cramping, proportionate, strong legs from under the wheel of his truck. He sniffled when his feet landed in the gravel.

 

\---

 

There was a certain thing about hunting that got Pete’s blood pumping. He felt a sense of maturity he never had before. Independence. He was always sad to kill an animal; always has been and always will be, but he realized it needed to happen in order to survive.

A certain kind of mutual respect bloomed between Peter, the forest, and its inhabitants from seemingly God-knows-where and suddenly he didn’t dread the woods so much.

 

\---

 

Uncle Nicholas had said this word—mature—and some sort of pride rose in Pete’s chest that was only rivalled by how he felt when Maggie read her first sentence a few months back.

“It takes an understandin’ of the woods:” Nick said, “y’need t’know the animals in order to fully concentrate on huntin’. Kinda like how y’can’t concentrate on workin’ on a car unless you know all its parts.”

 

\---

 

The deer froze; Pete wasn’t exactly sure what “understanding the woods” or that thing about mutual respect meant, but he figured feelings like maturity, solidarity, and concentration weren’t such bad signs. Well, that, and that the buck’s competitive look in Pete’s direction swelled.

The buck took off like a shot.

Pete smirked, turned, aimed—

Goddammit.  
God-dammit.  
 _Good one; see ya next time._

 

\---

 

The same buck appeared on the ridgeline as had gotten away from him last time.

Gave him that competitive look again.

Pete nodded, aimed.

The buck seemed to nod himself just before the bullet made contact.

 

\---

 

His gaze turned back to the deer in the bed of the truck, bullet hole unceremoniously resting underneath the right eye.

Pete swallowed heavily.

He and Aunt Maria prepared dinner that night.

 

\---

 

Pete turned his fork in the vegetables; ate everything including the meat.

Except the peas.

He hated peas.

 

\---

 

His life fell into a sort of rhythm, and he didn’t find much to fuss about while that went on.

Took Maggie to school—kindergarten, first grade.

Got to know a girl named Martha Strain.

He’d known her for most of their school days, but didn’t care too much to make small-talk.

She thought it was cute how he held his sister’s hand when they crossed the street, and he rarely took Martha out on a date without asking, embarrassedly, if Maggie could come with.

She always said yes.

 

\---

 

March 5, 1971 rolled around about as fast as Pete had worked up the nerve to get down on one knee and propose to Miss Martha Strain; heart clawing its way out of his throat and lungs filling with heavy air.

Their wedding was scheduled for October, and for once Pete wasn’t worried about being drafted.

The worry quickly returned, however, when the draft was read over the radio.

 

\---

 

He couldn't hide that he was crying as he picked up his bags and stood in front of the plane.

A line of other boys hugged their mothers and their sisters, shook their fathers’ hands and gave ‘em a pat on the back.

Pete had his sister and his fiance and his aunt and uncle. No parents to see him off.

He anticipated crying more from their absence.

He didn’t.

 

\---

 

Maggie was nearly eleven when her brother arrived home in early May of 1975. So much had changed in Asheville and yet nothing at all.

Nothing except Pete.

 

\---

 

His hands shook when the milk delivery man banged on the door with the glass milk bottles every Sunday.

His eyes darted around when popcorn popped just a little too loud.

He couldn’t sleep at night, Martha said, sitting up and rubbing his back when he woke up from a nightly nightmare.

He didn’t like storms. _He didn’t like storms. He didn’t like storms._

 

\---

 

The first time his sister woke up during a nasty summer barrage of rain and hail and probably cats and dogs along with it, she found her brother curled up like a terrified armadillo under the dining room table, the chairs all tipped over this way and that.

Maggie didn’t understand, Pete didn’t either; he sipped the tea she boiled for him with his shaking fists and his sweaty forehead and his perpetual look of _dear Lord dear God please make it stop please make it stop please make it stop please—_  
She sat across the table from him, large sleeper shirt hanging off her small shoulder, her eyes squinted with drowsiness.

 

\---

 

Uncle Nick took Pete out for a “man-only day”.

 _He likes you more,_ Maggie said. _Just because you’re a boy!_

Pete ran his tongue along his teeth. Wasn’t true.

 

As a boy, Pete was expected to be okay with killing living creatures that looked him in the eye.

 

As a boy, Pete was expected to step off to war and return unscathed; no underlying fears, no nothing. ...Except regrets from the next door neighbor girl who sported peace signs and chanted insults at him every time he stepped foot outside.

 

As a boy, Pete was expected not to show fear, especially in the face of something as trivial as inclement weather.

 

As a boy, Pete was expected not to show fear. Period.

 

\---

 

 _Yer a man,_ Nick said once they arrived at the hunting grounds, and with the slam of his truck door Pete saw a dozen naked children running through the street as a helicopter flew overhead, foot soldiers spread out among the kids.

 _Act like it, son,_ he added, and having a rifle shoved into his breast brought Pete back to seeing his friend’s cruiser erupt into flames and his rifle pushing into his chest from the blast; the truck became indecipherable heaps of metal as a roadside bomb went off.

Pete covered his eyes and cried.

Nick stopped speaking, realized what was going on. He remembered what it was like when he returned from Korea.

He sat alongside Pete in the jagged gravel and held his nephew against him.

 

\---

 

John Bray was that kinda boy that could sustain a blast from a bomb and laugh at a joke he himself made while Pete tried to staunch the blood from flowing out of his blown-apart gut.

He had that goddamn gap in his front teeth that whistled when he said “This fuckin’ hurts”, and his Baltimore accent was suddenly not so apparent to Pete anymore.

 _Dirty bastards ‘n their road bombs,_ he’d said, lying in Pete’s arms. A pause. _Pete? I don’t think I’m gettin’ outta this one._

 

\---

 

They held a small service for Bray in his mama’s backyard in late May of ‘75, under that big oak tree they used to play under as boys. Pete sobbed.

 

\---

 

August 26, 1975 was the hottest, most miserable goddamn day to hold a funeral and Pete grimaced at the thought of what his father might look like inside of that coffin in the sweltering heat.

He wondered why it took so long to send his pop’s body home but decided not to linger on the thought for long considering he didn’t feel much like puking or crying.

Not when he was cradling his sister in his side and holding her steady as _she_ cried. Too many tears would flood the place, he thought.

As if out of spite from his own subconscious, the memory of him shooting the peach pit at his father’s head at his mother’s funeral hit him and he choked up.

 

\---

 

Unsettlingly soon later, things turned around again.

Got working at the body shop again.

Maggie started junior high.

He visited his parents’ graves daily.

Brought flowers every Saturday.

He maintained a generally positive outlook despite sustaining multiple, crippling attacks whenever loud noises did a little more than startle him. They were decreasing in number, he thought.

The doctors still didn’t know how to coin it, but hey, least his asthma's gotten better.

 

\---

 

Although as terror-stricken as before and seemingly with little hope for a diagnosis, Pete married Miss Martha Strain on April 6, 1976. She never had a problem sitting and holding his hands and kissing his face during a storm or distracting him with a lopsided, rushed joke as they popped popcorn or someone knocked a little too loud.

They bought a small house and a nice piece of land on the edge of town and when Pete moved out of his aunt ‘n uncle’s he was surprised and saddened that his aunt was crying.

He hadn’t considered her infertility, after all. Least Maggie wasn’t moving out. They’d have her.

 _You’ll be hearin’ from me first thing,_ he promised her, _y’can come fer supper._

 

\---

 

1979.

“It’ll be clear today with a high of—”  
A terrified look moved across the man’s features as he eyed his daughter in his wife’s arms. Newborn or not, the girl had enough strength to wiggle her arms out of her swaddling. Well, at least they had the rest of their lives to perfect it.

“—and now for some sports news: the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Dallas Cowboys with a score of 35-31 and are earning the title of Super Bowl Champions.”

Pete beamed; he didn’t exactly care about the weather or that thing about the Super Bowl; he was much too focused on his child. He figured the nurse’s words like “healthy”, “good heartbeat”, and “strong as hell” were damn good signs. Well, that, and that his wife’s proud gaze across the room brightened. “Congratulations,” the telephone sung, friends’ and family’s voices gruff with years of cigarette smoking but happy no less. Tears welled up in his eyes and managed not to fall on his cheeks. Pete realized he craved a smoke.

**Author's Note:**

> I unfortunately had no plan of where to go with this when I started forever ago; all I knew what that I HAD to write Pete's childhood and then everything just branched off from that. So I do apologize for a lack of a definite plot...I was mostly interested in exploring Pete's family and his past pre-Nick.
> 
> Also - I've got RP blogs on tumblr for both Pete(rinkydinkpissinmatch) & Maggie(mamarandall).


End file.
